Designed in partnership with award-winning research and development company 3C Institute and funded by the Small Business Innovation Research program at the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, IvySCIP has been created to address President Obama's call to overhaul the testing and assessment of students.

IvySCIP is a comprehensive tool for enabling practitioners to assess the social and emotional learning needs of elementary students diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. IvySCIP assesses five key social competencies: self-knowledge and self-advocacy, social interaction, emotional regulation, executive skills and problem solving, and self-care.

Described by the White House as the "next generation of assessments in education," IvySCIP has been piloted by more than 50 teachers and related service providers and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Reports generated from IvySCIP help educators prioritize instruction, develop Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), and track student growth and progress toward meeting goals.

IvySCIP co-author, Eve Müller, explains that IvySCIP is the first product of its kind to support teachers through all aspects of social learning instruction for students with higher functioning autism. "Social learning is an area where teachers often don't know where to begin," says Müller. "IvySCIP addresses this need head on, starting with assessing the strengths and needs of students."

As the emphasis on the importance of children's social and emotional learning (SEL) in education increases, IvySCIP has enabled Ivymount staff to share their wealth of autism expertise with the field more broadly.

"Eve Müller, Lynn Cannon, and Melissa Cherry have taken some of the best Ivymount SEL programming and assessments, and designed the IvySCIP in response to that need," says Jan Wintrol, CEO, Ivymount Corporation. "It is an outstanding achievement that the IvySCIP was recognized as worthy of a Federal Grant from the Department of Education to develop this product for educators nationally. Hats off to these women."

Click the video below to learn more about IvySCIP.

The R&D described here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program contract ED-IES-16-C-0015 to 3C Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.